


Oh, But Dear, The Sky Is Low

by HighVelocity



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Mental Anguish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3897124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighVelocity/pseuds/HighVelocity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmares aren't just nightmares, and demons aren't just the tangible forms of twisted Fade spirits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, But Dear, The Sky Is Low

_His growl is low, rumbling. Leonine._

_He recognises this place. He has walked it many a night. It is nothing but blood and bone, the reek of magic strong in the air, suffocating him._

_And all the while, she dances about him, taunting him, prowling in circles, offering what he knows he can never have. What he should never touch._

_He yearns all the same, but discipline is a chokingly firm hand on the bit that curbs him, and he is grateful for it._

_So he goes to his knees in prayer, broken mouth murmuring broken words, leather straps and reins wrapped tight and tighter around that same guiding hand. At the edges of the cage, faces flicker in and out. There is a whisper of sound that grows, and swells, as he strives to ignore it - it is his name, formed by voices he could never forget._

_"Cullen," she says, soft and low. Sultry. There is a resonance in the timbre of her voice that has his body melting, it always had, it was why... it was why he'd said so long ago that she could talk to him any time she wished. Any time it was safe._

_He'd liked the sound of her voice._

_"Cullen," it comes again. Sharper. Demanding his attention._

_In his dreams, he is young, just past the brink of manhood. He is young and learning what men feel. He is swept away by romantic ideas, despite his stolid practicality, his self-discipline. He is a moth to her flame. Intelligent, canny, just as restrained as he. There was a feeling that she would know. That she would understand. She would **know**._

_It is just talk. Surely that could not hurt?_

_Cleanest Harrowing he'd seen._

_He squeezes his eyes shut, words falling faster and faster._

_"Cullen, please."_

_In the space between one breath and the next, the tone of the dream shifts._

_"Cullen!"_

_His heart stutters, and his head jerks up. Before him floats the face - faces? - the image of -_

_The image of -_

_"No. No, no. Leave me. **Leave** me," he snarls, scrambling back. His heart does fall, then, slipping out of his chest to dive into the deep darkness of the nightmare._

_It is her face. It is their faces. Overlapping, one bleeding into the other._

_"Cullen, hush, no. It is not what you - "_

_"Be silent!" he roars, hands scrabbling behind him for purchase, for something solid. His heart is gone despite the pounding of his pulse in his neck, in his temples, and he needs to ground himself. "How is it you - **why** must it be you?!"_

_"Cullen."_

_She - they stand, and he sees them, sees the old shape of an infatuation over the smaller, sleeker shape of his love. He drops his head, turns away, heartsick and sore._

_He won't say her name. He can't say her name, here, where pain twists knives in his chest and turns all that he held dear against him._

_He can't say **their** names._

_"Please, listen. It is not what you think, truly."_

_"Why should I listen to you? Demon, abomination. I curse your name and I curse you for taking her shape!"_

_There is an odd sadness about the twin figures. Blue eyes and bright gold eyes, but the same dark hair._

_Maker take him, did they indeed have the same colour of hair?_

_The blue curve of a tattoo flickers in and out, framing the socket of the eye. It belongs on one woman but not the other, this he knows full well, but the longer he watches, the more he doubts - they begin to look the same._

_He remembers the shapes of their mouths - he knows **her** mouth, with its full lips and chapped skin and softness, the way it twists into wicked grins in teasing him - but here they are blurring, superceded by the longer, thinner curve of another's lips, curved gently into a perpetual smile. _

_He remembers the high cheekbones and oval face, the fair skin flawless, from days upon end spent inside a tower; he remembers she was tall and graceful and did not fuss._

_He knows the other has skin like banked embers, warm to his touch, that she has an angular face with a squared-off jaw and long almond-shaped eyes that tilt in a very feline manner, that she has scars and marks and a scattering of freckles over her shoulders._

_He knows and remembers and once upon a time the distinction was as clear as day, but here and now - there is an implication here he does not care for one whit._

_"Ask your questions, Cullen. I can see them forming on your lips. So ask them."_

_The figures sway forward. There is a brief, jarring moment where they move out of sync, splitting into two, before they shimmer and mould together again. They are nearly the same height, but one has the broader hips._

_She could've borne you children so easily, comes the insidious whisper._

_He looks away, teeth gritted._

_"So many differences, yet so many similarities. Isn't that right?"_

_Oh, Maker take him, here it comes._

_"Or was it truly something... more?"_

_"You'll get nothing from me."_

_Twisting, turning, darkening. His hands curl into fists. Yes, the tone has shifted yet again. Whatever it says now will be nothing but cruel, looking to plunge another dagger into him._

_"Perhaps you doubt yet. What a romance. Seeking to atone for the mistakes done to one, by loving the other as fiercely as you do. Or... do you?"_

_There is a hint of a smirk in its voice now. He shies away as it reaches out, careful to remain just out of reach._

_"Traitor. Loving one woman but seeing another. You try to rekindle what you always wanted but could never have, never hold in your arms, fool boy, for you drove it out of your life oh so very long ago. You should've said yes. You should have taken her. Would that you had been wiser! Then you could have been slaking your thirst in her night after night, yours, all yours for the taking. She would've borne you children, with your eyes and her hair, long and beautiful, falling down her back - "_

_"Enough!" he roars again, eyes wide and expression stricken. The sound reverberates around them, shattering the edges of the dream. Maker take him, this was - oh, Andraste's grace, that was not -_

\---

He awakens with a crash, starting up right out of bed and slamming straight into a wiry, strong frame that holds him tight, pushing his head into the crook of a shoulder. Cullen struggles for a moment before sense comes back to him, on the long inhale that brings her gentle scent into his lungs - Skyhold's crisp, biting winter air, the smell of sun-warmed skin and hair, clean sweat, the light perfume of sweet flowers and leather. _Ziva_.

"Cullen," she says, and he flinches. He has no idea what to do with his hands. He fears to touch her still.

Her own hands are not still, though, and they run soothingly into his hair, over and over again, stroking the nape of his neck, his shoulders. Ziva seems to be shaking, or perhaps it is just him. Perhaps they both are. But her voice is soft, steady as a rock.

"Breathe, Cullen, breathe. How do you feel?"

Hands curling into loose fists, he shudders, arms coming around Ziva's frame. She is as solid and as warm as ever, a bit of a flame burning in his embrace.

"I'm sorry," he rasps out instead, cheek pressed into her neck. Soft, hot, alive. "I'm sorry. _I'm so sorry_."

**Author's Note:**

> I am officially Dragon Age Trash. 
> 
> Title from 'Obedear' by Purity Ring.


End file.
